RHINE BILLETING.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2989, 29 September 1919, Page 8

RHINE BILLETING.

(By Cicely Hamilton.)

Evan*though I knew I had military authority to back me, it was not without a certain uneasiness that I rang at my first German billet. The stamped and printed slip 1 held ready to thrust forward entitled me to shelter—roof, bed, and a measure of attendance; no man, I imagined, would dispute its plain order; but 1 anticipated scowls and an obvious unwillingness—the species of reception that would make me mioolhfortable and conscious of being an intruder. Three weeks of Rhine billeting have taught me to laugh at my nervousness; since, whatever the motive, the German hausfrau does well by the lodger indicted on her. Her attitude to the alien may be summed up as correct, with here and there a leaning towards cordiality—induced, one hopes, by the fact that her post-war experience of the Englishman lias revealed him as less,.intolerable than she pictured him some months ago. She accepts your slip of paper with apparent unconcern, leads you to your bedroom, shows you where the liglit turns on, provides you with a latchkey, and retires with no sign of annoyance.

After that, very possibly, your personal intercourse ceases —since the “occupying” community, civilian as well as military, collects in messes for its meals; but you find your bed made and your room cleaned and tidied every morning. Towels, it may be, will be lacking to your washing equipment ; they are not included in military requirements, and the billeted lodger will do well to carry a provision thereof as be carries a provision of soap; but the other accessories of an ordinary bedroom are furnished as a matter of course. There are exceptions to the rule that intercourse with your involuntary hosts is slight; the garrulous landlady, ' I imagine, exists in all quarters of the globe. Very certainly she exists oil the banks of the Rhine—a being as impossible to silence as her counterpart in Blackpool or Birmingham. Instructions against fraternisation are of no avail against her flood of confidences on the subject of the names, the ages, the marriages and prospects of her offspring s and, personally, T sat helpless a night or two ago when my hostess construed an expression of thanks for lighting the gas into ail invitation to produce a selection of family photographs, and accompanied the display with biographical details in the thickest of Cologne diaTcot. Remembering that the street outside was patrolled by British military police, that my landlady and I were still technically enemies, it was an odd sensation to he called on to admire the counterfeit presentment of a son ol the house arrayed in his best Prussian uniform. There' would be little hope for a new Germany if all her children were as the postcard sellers of Cologne, whose displays of the retreat of the German army, of the changing of British guard on German bridges are to me a perpetual source of amazement mingled with shame. But now and again, over the harrier that separates the two races, one catches a glimpse of a finer spirit—that suffers. Yesterday, a woman on whom 1 was billeted, spoke to mo suddenly and impulsively; she had come to apologise for 'Tome trivial shortcoming in the housekeeping arrangements due to the illness of a maid-servant. And then, without warning, she spoke from her hear! of other things—chiefly, I think, from a need of someone to speak to. Of the thought of Germany that was always with her—Germany defeated and 'having lost all to her conquerors Of how hard it was to keep cheerful outwardly—of the tears that were always near her eyes. ... ■t There was' nothing to do but listen with respect; realising, as one listened, that in such an attitude lay more hopo for the future of a. broken country than in many marks of profit acquired by the traders of Cologne.